Kevin Spacey
Appearances
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I just followed that lead. And I, I just think it's the kind of film that so many of the elements that had been at work from the beginning of the movie in terms of its style, in terms of how he built this terror, in terms of how he built for the audience, a sense of this person being one of the scariest people they might ever encounter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It really allowed me to be able to not have to do that much, just say the words and mean them. And I think it also is an example of what makes tragedy so difficult. I mean, you know, very often tragedy is people operating without enough information. They don't have all the facts. Romeo and Juliet, they don't have all the facts. They don't know what we know as an audience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so in the end, whether Brad Pitt's character ends up shooting John Doe or turning the gun on himself, which was a discussion. I mean, there were a number of alternative endings that were discussed. Nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow. It is complicated and shows how nobody wins in the end when you're not operating with all the information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I've been very fortunate to be directed by Fincher a couple of times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Shall we try it again? And you go, okay, yeah, we can try it again. And sometimes he'll do take, and then you'll look to see if he has any added genius to hand you. And he just goes, let's do it again. And then let's do it again. And sometimes, I say this in all humility, he's literally trying to beat the acting out of you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And by continually saying, do it again, do it again, do it again, and not giving you any specifics, he is systematically shredding you of all pretense of all, you know, because look, Very often, you know, actors, we come in on the set and we've thought about the scene and we've worked out, you know, I've got this prop and I'm going to do this thing with a can.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You know, all these things, all the tea, I'm going to do a thing with that thing. And David is the kind of director where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them. And it takes a while. to get to that place. I'll tell you a story. This is a story I just love because it's in exactly the same wheelhouse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So Jack Lemmon's first movie was a film called It Should Happen to You, and it was directed by George Cukor. And Jack tells this story, and it was just an incredibly charming story to hear Jack tell. He said, so I'm doing this picture. And let me tell you, this is a terrific part for me. And I'm doing a scene. It's on my first day. It's my first day and it's a terrific scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And he goes, we do the first take. And George Cukor comes up to me and he says, Jack, I said, yeah. He said, could you do, let's do another one, but just do a little less in this one. And Jack said, a little less, a little less than what I just did. He said, yeah, just a little less. So he goes, we do another take. And I think, boy, that was it. I mean, let's just go home.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And Cukor walked up to him and said, Jack, I'd like to do another one, this time just a little bit less. And Jack said, less than what I just did now? He said, yeah, just a little bit less. He goes, oh, okay. So they did another take. And Cukor came up and he said, Jack, just a little bit less. And Jack said, a little less than what I just did? He said, yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He goes, well, if I do any less, I'm not going to be acting. And Cukor said, exactly, Jack, exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah. And also because I so well remember I think the work that Brad did, and also Morgan did in that scene, but the work that Brad had to do, where he had to go. I remember rehearsing with him as we were all staying at this little hotel nearby that location, and we rehearsed the night before we started shooting that sequence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I just, I mean, it was just incredible to see the levels of emotions he had to go through. And then the decision of what do I do Because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins. But if I don't do it, then I'm, what kind of a man, husband am I? I just thought he did really incredible work. So it was also... not easy to not react to the power of what he was throwing at me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I just thought it was an extraordinary, a really extraordinary scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
In terms of the writing and in terms of what the characters had to do, it was an incredible culmination of how this character could manipulate in the way that he did. And in the end,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's literally he has a stopwatch, and he's timing how long a scene is taking. And then he'll say, you need to take a minute off this scene. Like a minute? Yeah, a minute off this scene. I want it to move like this. So let's pick it up. Let's pick up the pace. Let's see if we can take a minute off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Which is, you know, we don't take Big dramatic pauses. Yeah, right. You know, before we speak. We speak. We say what we want. We, you know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
They didn't always like the dramatic pauses. I mean, look, you go back, any student of acting, you go back to the 30s and the 40s, 50s. The speed at which actors spoke. Not just in the comedies, which, of course, you know, you look at any Preston Sturges movie and it's incredible how fast people are talking and how funny things are when they happen that fast.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But then, you know, acting styles changed. We got into a different kind of thing in the late 50s and 60s and – A lot of actors are feeling it, which is, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just that if you want to keep an audience engaged as Fincher does, and I believe successfully does in all of his work,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
pace timing movement clarity speed are admirable to achieve and all of that he wants the actor to be as natural as possible to strip away all the bullshit of acting yeah and become human Look, I've been lucky with other directors. Sam Mendes is similar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I remember when I walked in to maybe the first rehearsal for Richard III that we were doing, I had brought with me a canopy of ailments that my Richard was going to suffer from. And Sam, you whittled it down to like three, like maybe your arm and maybe your leg. But let's get rid of the other 10 things that you brought into the room because I was so excited to capture this character.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So very often, Trevor Nunn is this way, a lot of wonderful directors I've worked with, they're really good at helping you trim and edit things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Those are two very interesting descriptions. When I think, I guess when I think performer... I tend to think entertaining. I tend to think comedy. I tend to think winning over an audience. I tend to think that there's something about that quality of wanting to have people enjoy themselves. And when you saddle that against
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
what maybe he means as an actor, which is more dramatic or more text-driven, more... Look, I've always believed that my job, not every actor feels this way, but my job, the way that I've looked at it is that my job is to serve the writing. And that if I serve the writing, I will... in a sense, serve myself because I'll be in the right world. I'll be in the right context.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I'll be in the right style. I'll have embraced what a director's, you know, it's not my painting. It's someone else's painting. I'm a series of colors in someone else's painting. And the barometer for me has always been that when people stop me and talk to me about a character I've played and reference their name as if they actually exist, that's when I feel like I've gotten close to doing my job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
To me, that's the greatest compliment for me as an actor. I love being able to go. I mean, when I think about performers who inspire me, And I remember when I was young and I was introduced to Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn. I just, I believed who they were. I knew nothing about them. They were just these extraordinary characters doing this extraordinary stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And then I think more... recently contemporary, when I think of the work that Philip Seymour Hoffman did and Heath Ledger and people that, when I think about what they could be doing, what they could do, what they would have done had they stayed with us, I'm so excited when I go into a cinema or I go into a play and I completely am taken to some place that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I believe exists in characters that become real.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
One of the things that I feel that I try to do in my work is when I read something for the first time, when I read a script or play, and I am absolutely devastated by it. It is the most extraordinary, the most beautiful, the most life affirming or terrifying. It's then a process, weirdly, of working backwards.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Because I want to work in such a way that that's the experience I give to the audience when they first see it. That they have the experience I had when I read it. I remember that there's been times in the creative process when something was pointed out to me or something was... I remember I was doing a play and I was having this really tough time with a...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
one of the last scenes in the play, and I just couldn't figure it out. I was in rehearsal, and although we had a director in that play, I called another, a friend of mine who was also director, and I had him come over, and I said, look, this scene, I'm just having the toughest, I cannot seem to crack this scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so we read it through a couple of times, and then this wonderful director named John Swanbeck, who would eventually direct me in a film called The Big Kahuna, but this was before that, He said to me the most incredible thing. He just said, all right, what's the last line you have in this scene before you fall over and fall asleep? And I said, the last line is that last drink, the old KO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And he went, okay, I want you to think about what that line actually means and then work backwards. And so he left, and I sort of was left with this, what? Like, what does that mean? How am I supposed to? And then like a couple of days went by, a couple of days went by, and I thought, okay, so what does that line actually mean? Well, that last drink, the old KO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
KO is knockout, which is a boxing term. It's the only boxing term the writer uses in the play. And then I went back and I realized my friend was so smart and so incredible to have said, ask a question you haven't thought of asking yet. I realized that the playwright wrote the last round, the eighth round between these two brothers, and it was a fight. physical as well as emotional.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And when I brought that into the rehearsal room to the directors doing that play, he liked that idea. And we staged that scene as if it was the eighth round, although the audience wouldn't have known that. But just what I loved about that was that somebody said to me, ask yourself a question you haven't asked yourself yet. What does that line mean? And then we're back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, but also because it's this incredible... Why didn't I think to ask that question myself? That's what you have directors for. That's what you have, you know, so many places where ideas can come from. But that just illustrates that even though in my brain I go, I always like to work backwards, I missed it in that one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I'm very grateful to my friend for having pushed me into being able to realize what that meant and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, there's two slightly different contexts, I think. One is in the rehearsal room. Improvisation could be a wonderful device. I mean, Sam Mendes, for example, he'll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing. He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in and he says, well, let's put two chairs here and here. You guys, let's start in these chairs far apart from each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Let's see what happens with the scene if you're that far apart. And so we'll do the scene that way. And then he goes, okay, let's bring a rug in and let's bring these chairs much closer and let's see what happens if the space, if the space between you is. And so then you try it that way. And then, you know, it's a little harder in Shakespeare to improv, but in any situation where you,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You want to try and see where could a scene go? Where would the scene go if I didn't make that choice? Where would the scene go if I made this choice? Where would the scene go if I didn't say that or I said something else? So that's how improv can be a valuable process to learn about limits and boundaries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
and what's going on with a character that somehow you discover in, in, in trying something that isn't on the page. Then there's the different thing, which is the trying to make it fresh and trying to make it new. And that is really a reference to theater.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Anybody loves sports, right? So you go and you watch on a pitch, you watch on a tennis game, you watch basketball, you watch football. Yeah, the rules are the same, but it's a different game every time you're out on that court or on that field. It's no different in theater. Yes, it's the same lines. Maybe even blocking is similar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But what's different is attack, intention, how you are growing in a role and watching your fellow actors grow in theirs and how every night it's a new audience and they're reacting differently. And you literally, where you can go from week one of performances in a play to week 12 is extraordinary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the difference between theater and film is that no matter how good someone might think you are in a movie, you'll never be any better. It's frozen. Whereas I can be better tomorrow night than I was tonight. I can be better in a week than I was tonight. It is a living, breathing, shifting, changing, growing thing every single day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And if you start giggling on stage, everyone gets to see you do that too, which I am very guilty of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It's unlike a movie where I might have a scene with so-and-so on this day and then another scene with them in a week and a half, and then that's the only scenes we have in the whole movie together. Every single day, when you show up in the rehearsal room, it's the whole company. You're all up for it every day. You're learning, you're growing, you're trying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And there is an incredible trust that happens. And I was, of course, fortunate that some of the things I learned and observed about being a part of that family, being included in that family, and being a part of creating that family, I was able to observe from people like Jack Lemmon, who who led many companies that I was fortunate to work in and be a part of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, and also there are some times when, like six months later, I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll go, that's how to play that scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I don't really think there is any. I think there's just... you eventually learn about yourself on film. You know, when I first did like my first episode of The Equalizer, you know, it's just, it's just horrible. It's just so bad. But I didn't know about myself. I didn't, so slowly you begin to learn about yourself, but I think good acting is good acting. And I think that,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
If a camera's right here, you know that your front row is also your back row. You just don't have to do so much. There is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
in theater a particular kind of energy almost like an athlete that you have to have vocally to be able to get up seven performances a week and never lose your voice and always be there and always be alive and always be doing the best work you can that you just don't require in film you know you don't have to have the same um It just doesn't require the same kind of stamina that doing a play does.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, but you have no idea what's going on on stage with the actors. I mean, I have literally laughed thickly through speeches that I had to give because my fellow actors were putting carrots up their nose or broccoli in their ears or doing whatever they were doing to make me laugh. So they're just having fun. They're having the time of their life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And by the way, Judi Dench is the worst giggler of all. I mean, they had to bring the curtain down on her and Maggie Smith because they were laughing so hard they could not continue the play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It can be helpful. But Improv is, I'm a big, such a big believer in the writing and in serving the writing and doing the words the writer wrote. That improv for me, unless you're just doing like comedy and, you know, like, I mean, I love improv and In comedy, it's brilliant. So much fun to watch people just come up with something right there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But that's where you're looking for laughs and you're specifically in a little scene that's being created. But I think improv has had value, but I have not experienced it as much in doing plays as I have sometimes in doing film where you'll start off rehearsing and a director may say, let's just go off book and see what happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I've had moments in film where someone went off book and it was terrifying. There was a scene I had in Glen Gary Glen Ross where the character I play has fucked something up, has just screwed something up, and Pacino is livid. And so we had this scene where Al is walking like this, and the camera is moving with him, and he is chewing me a new asshole.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And in the middle of the take, Al starts talking about me,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I'm now, I'm literally like, I don't know what the hell is happening, but I'm reacting. We got to the end of that take. Al walked up to me and he went, oh, that was so good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Oh, that was so good. You look like a car wreck. And I was like, yeah. And it was actually an incredibly generous thing that he gave me so that I would react. Oh, wow. Did they use that shot? Because you were in shock. It was my closeup. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, he's the reason I got the movie. A lot of people might think because Jack was in the film that he had something to do with it. But actually, I was doing a play called Lost in Yonkers on Broadway. And we had the same dresser who worked with him, a girl named Laura. It was wonderful. Laura Beattie. And she told Al that he should come and see this play because she wanted to see me in this play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I was playing this gangster. It was a fun, fun, fun part. So I didn't know Pacino came on some night and saw this play. And then like three days later, I got a call to come in and audition for this Glen Ross, which of course I knew is a play, David Mamet's play. And then I auditioned. Jamie Foley was the director who would eventually direct a bunch of House of Cards. Wonderful, wonderful guy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I got the part. Well, I didn't quite get the part. They were going to bring together the actors that they thought they were going to give the parts to on a Saturday at Al's office. And they asked me if I would come and do a read-through. And I said, who's going to be there? And they said, well, so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. And then Jack Lemmon is flying in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I said, don't tell Mr. Lemmon that I'm doing the read-through. Is that possible? And they were like, sure. So I'll never forget this. Jack was sitting in a chair in Pacino's office. doing the New York Times crossword puzzle as he did every day. And I walked in the door and he went, oh, Jesus Christ. Is it possible you could get a job without me? Jesus Christ.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I'm so tired of holding up your end of it. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. So I got the job because of Pacino. And it was really one of the first major roles that I ever had in a film. And, you know, to be working with that group,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, by that time, we had done Long Day's Journey Tonight in the theater. We'd done a miniseries called The Murder of Mary Fagan on NBC. We'd done a film called Dad. that Gary David Goldberg directed, with Ted Danson. So this was the fourth time we were working together, and we knew each other. He'd become my father figure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I don't know if you know that I originally met Jack Lemmon when I was very, very young. He was doing a production at the Mark Taper Forum of a Sean O'Casey play called Juno and the Peacock with Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton. And on a Saturday in December of 1974, my junior high school drama class went to a workshop. It was called How to Audition. And we did this workshop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Many schools in Southern California were part of this Drama Teachers Association. So we got these incredible experiences of being able to go see professional productions and be involved in these workshops or festivals. So I had to get up and do a monologue in front of Mr. Lemon when I was 13 years old. And he walked up to me at the end of that, and he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He said, no, everything I've been talking about, you just did. What's your name? I said, Kevin. He said, wait, let me tell you something. When you get finished with high school, as I'm sure you're going to go on and do theater, you should go to New York and you should study to be an actor because this is what you're meant to do with your life. And he was like an idol. And 12 years later,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I read in the New York Times that he was coming to Broadway to do this production of A Long Day's Journey tonight, a year and some months after I read this article. And I was like, I'm going to play Jamie in that production.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I then, with a lot of opposition, because the cast and director didn't want to see me, they said that the director, Jonathan Miller, wanted movie actors to play the two sons. And ultimately, I found out that Jonathan Miller, the director, was coming to New York to do a series of lectures at Alice Tully Hall. And I went to try to figure out how I could maybe meet him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I was sitting in that theater listening to this incredible lecture he was doing. And sitting next to me was an elderly woman. I mean, elderly, 80-something. She was asleep. But sticking out of her handbag, which was on the floor, was an invitation to a cocktail reception in honor of Dr. Jonathan Miller. And so I thought, you know, she's tired. She's probably going to go home.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So I took that and walked into this cocktail reception. went over to Dr. Miller, who was incredibly kind, and said, sit down, I'm always very curious, what brings young people to my lectures? And I said to him, Eugene O'Neill brought me here. And he was like, what? I've always wanted to meet him, where is he?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I told him that I'd been trying for seven months to get an audition for A Long Day's Journey, and that his American cast directors were telling my agents that he wanted big American movie stars. And at that moment, he turned and he saw one of those casting directors who was there that night. Because I knew he was going to be in New York starting auditions that week.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And she was staring daggers at me. And he just got it. And he said, someone have a pen. And he took a little paper and started writing. He said, listen, Kevin, there are many situations in which casting directors have a lot of say and a lot of power and a lot of leverage. And then there are other situations where they just take directors' messages. And on this one, they're taking my messages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
This is where I'm staying. Make sure you people get to me. We start auditions on Thursday. And on Thursday, I had an opportunity to come in and audition for this play that I'd been working on and preparing for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And at the end of it, I did four scenes at the end of it, he said to me that unless someone else came in and blew him against the wall like I had just done, as far as he was concerned, I pretty much had the part, but I couldn't tell my agents that yet because I had to come back and read with Mr. Lemon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so three months later, in August of 1985, I found myself in a room with Jack Lemon again at 890 Broadway, which is where they rehearse a lot of the Broadway plays. And we did four scenes together and I was toppling over him. I was pushing him. I was relentless. And I'll never forget at the end of that, Lemon came over to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, that was a touch of terrific. I never thought we'd find the rotten kid, but he's it. Jesus Christ, what the hell was that? And I ended up spending the next year of my life with that man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I've always, we used to joke that if every contract came with a Jack Lemmon clause, it would be a more beautiful world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Wow. I think he truly set out in his life to accomplish what his father said to him on his deathbed. His father was, by the way, called the Donut King in Boston. And not in the entertainment business at all. He literally owned a donut company. And when he was passing away, Jack said, the last thing my father said to me was, go out there and spread a little sunshine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I truly think that's what Jack loved to do. I remember this, and I don't know if this will answer your question, but I think it's revealing about what he's able to do and what he was able to do and how that ultimately influenced what I was able to do. Sam Mendes had never directed a film before American Beauty.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so what he did was he took the best elements of theater and applied them to the process. So we rehearsed it like a play in a soundstage where everything was laid out like it would be in a play and this couch will be here. And yeah. He'd sent me a couple of tapes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He'd sent me two cassette tapes, one that he'd like to call pre-Lester, before he begins to move in any direction, and then post-Lester. And they just were different songs. And then he said to me one day, and I always thought this was brilliant of Sam to use Lemon, knowing what Lemon meant to me. He said, when was the last time you watched The Apartment? I said, I don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I mean, I love that movie so much. He goes, I want you to watch it again and then let's talk. So I went and I watched the movie again. And we sat down and Sam said, what Lemon does in that film is incredible because there is never a moment in the movie where we see him change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And he becomes the man he becomes because of the experiences that he has through the course of the film. But there's this remarkable consistency in who he becomes. And that's what I need you to do as Lester. I don't want the audience to ever see him change. I want him to evolve. And so we did some, I mean, first of all, it was just a great direction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And then second of all, we did some things that people don't know we did to aid that gradual shift of that man's character. First of all, I had to be in the best shape from the beginning of the movie because we didn't shoot it in sequence. So I was in this crazy shape. I had this wonderful trainer named Mike Torsha, who just was incredible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But so what we did was, in order to then show this gradual shift, was I had three different hair pieces, I had three different kinds of costumes of different colors and sizes, and I had different makeup.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
so in the beginning i was wearing a kind of drab dull slightly you know uninspired hair piece and my makeup was kind of gray and boring and i was a little bit there were times when i was like too much like this and sam would go kevin you look like walter math out would you please stand up a little bit we're sort of midway through at this point and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Then, at a certain point, the wig changed and it had little highlights in it, a little more color, a little more... The makeup became a little... The suits got a little tighter. And then finally, a third wig that was golden highlights and sunshine and rosy cheeks and tight fit. And these are what we call theatrical tricks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
This is how you... An audience doesn't even know it's happening, but it is this gradual... And I just always felt that that was such a brilliant way because he knew what I felt about Jack. And when you watch The Apartment, it is extraordinary that he doesn't ever change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I did my thank you speech and I walked off stage and I remember I had to sit down for a moment because I didn't wanna go to the press room because I wanted to see if Sam was gonna win. And so I was waiting and my phone rang and it was Lemon. He said, you're a son of a bitch. I said, what?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He goes, first of all, congratulations and thanks for thanking me because, you know, God knows you couldn't have done it without me. He said, second of all, he said, do you know how long it took me to win from supporting actor? I won it for Mr. Roberts and it took me like 10, 12 years to win Oscar. You did it in four, you son of a bitch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, I mean, some people think Clockwork Orange is a comedy. And I'm not saying there aren't some good laughs in Clockwork Orange, but yeah, you know, it's...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, if it's a line, it's a line I cross all the time, because I've tried always to find the humor. Unexpected sometimes, maybe inappropriate sometimes, maybe shocking. But I've tried in, I think, almost every dramatic role I've had to have a sense of humor and to be able to bring that along with everything else that is serious. Because frankly, that's how we deal with stuff in life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Sure. Well, I mean, you know, it's like... the great Mary Tyler Moore show where they can't stop giggling at the clown's funeral. I mean, it's just one of the great episodes ever. You know, giggling at a funeral is as bad as farting at a funeral. And, you know, I'm sure that there's some people who've done both.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, and I also think that the film was powerful because you had three very honest and genuine portrayal of young people. And then you had Lester behaving like a young person, doing things that were unexpected. And I think that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
The honesty with which it dealt with those issues that those teenagers were going through, and the honesty with which it dealt with what Lester was going through, I think are some of the reasons why the film had the response that it did from so many people. I mean, I used to get stopped, and someone would say to me, when I first saw American Beauty, I was married.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the second time I saw it, I wasn't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I was like, well, we weren't trying to increase the divorce rate. It wasn't our intention.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But it is interesting how so many people have those kinds of crazy fantasies. And what I admired so much about who Lester was as a person, why I wanted to play him, is because in the end, he makes the right decision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Absolutely. Written and directed by... Yeah, can't take credit for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
There's some family scenes gone awry in that movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, with Annette, I just adored working with her. And we were the two actors that Sam wanted from the very beginning. much against the will of the higher-ups who wanted other actors to play those roles. But I've known Annette since we did a screen test together for Milos Forman for a film he did of the Les Liaisons Dangereuses movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It was a different film from that one, but it was the same story. And I've always thought she is just remarkable. And I think that the work she did in that film, the relationship that we were able to build. For me, the saddest part of that success was that she didn't win the Oscar, and I felt she should have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, I'll share with you a story that most people don't know, which is our first two days of shooting were in Smiley's. the place where I get a job in a fast food place. Yeah, it's a burger joint. Yeah. And I guess it was like maybe the third day or the fourth day of shooting, we'd now done that. And I said to Sam, so how are the dailies? How do they look? He goes, which ones?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I said, well, the first smileys. He goes, oh, they're shit. And I went, yeah. No, how were they? He goes, no, they're shit. I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate the costumes. I hate the location. I hate that you're inside. I hate the way you acted. I hate everything but the script. So I've gone back to the studio and asked them if we can reshoot the first two days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I was like, Sam, this is your very first movie. You're going back to Steven Spielberg and saying, I need to reshoot the first two days entirely? And he went, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And that's exactly what we did. A couple of weeks later, they decided that it was now a drive-thru because Annette and Peter Geller used to come into the place and ordered from the counter. Now, Sam had decided it has to be a drive-thru. You have to be in the window of the drive-thru, change the costumes, and we reshot those first two days. And Sam said, it was actually a moment of incredible joy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
because he said the worst thing that could possibly have happened happened in my first two days. And after that, I was like, I know what I'm doing, and I knew I had to reshoot it, and it was absolutely right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Two other little things to share with you about Sam, about the way he is. You wouldn't know it, but the original script opened and closed with a trial. Ricky was accused of Lester's murder. And the movie was bookended by this trial. It's a very different movie. Which they shot the entire trial for weeks. Okay? Wow, yeah. And I used to fly in my dreams.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You know those opening shots over the neighborhood? I used to come into those shots in my bathrobe, flying, and then when I hit the ground and the newspaper was thrown at me by the newspaper guy and I caught it, the alarm would go off and I'd wake up in bed. I spent five days being hung by wires and filming these sequences of flying through my dreams.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And Sam said to me,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, the flying sequences are all gone and the trial is gone. And I was like, what? What are you talking about? And here's my other little favorite story about Sam and that. When we were shooting in the valley, one of those places I flew, this was an indoor set.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Sam said to me in the morning, hey, at lunch, I just want to record a guide track of all the dialogue, all of your narration, because they just needed an editing as a guide. And I said, sure. So I remember we came outside in this hallway where I had a dressing room in this little studio we were in. And Sam had like a cassette tape recorder and like a little microphone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And we put it on the floor, and he pushed record. And I read the entire narration. And I never did it again. That's the narration in the movie. Because Sam said, when he listened to it, I wasn't trying to do anything. He said, you had no idea where these things were going, where they were going to be placed, what they were going to mean.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You just read it so innocently, so purely, so directly that I knew if I brought you into a studio and put headphones on you and had you do it again, it would change the ease with which you'd done it. And so they just fixed all of the problems that they had with this little cassette. And that is the way I did it, and the only time I did it was in this little hallway.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
See, it's funny. I don't think of the roses, and I don't think of her body in the poster, and I don't think of those things as the beauty.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, and in fact, I'll even tell you something that I always thought was so incredible. When we shot the scenes in the office where Lester worked, the job he hated, there was a bulletin board behind me on a wall. And someone who was watching a cut or early dailies who was in the marketing department saw that someone had cut out a little piece of paper and stuck it. And it said, look closer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And they presented that to Sam as the idea of what that should, that could go on the poster. The idea of looking closer was such a brilliant idea, but it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't like, it wasn't in the script. It was just on a wall behind me and someone happened to zoom in on it and see it and thought, that's what this movie's about. This movie's about taking the time to look closer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I think that in itself is just beautiful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
When I was at my lowest point, yes, it scared me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Because he got there. He was given the opportunity to reinvent himself and to try things he'd never tried, to ask questions he'd never asked, to... to trust his instincts and to become the best version of himself he could become. And so Dick Van Dyke, who has become an extraordinary friend of mine, Dick is 98 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And he says, you know, if I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. When I spend time with him, I'm just moved by every day, you know, he gets up and he goes, it's a good day. I woke up and I learn a lot about, I have a, a different feeling about death now than I did seven years ago. Uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I'm on the path to being able to be in a place where I've resolved the things I needed to resolve. And I won't probably get to all of it in my lifetime, but I certainly would like to be in a place where if I were to drop dead tomorrow, it would have been an amazing life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It was November 1st of 2017, and then Thanksgiving Day of that same year.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I have heard, and now quite often, that everybody has a Kevin Spacey story. And what that tells me is that I hit on a lot of guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I did a lot of horsing around, I did a lot of things that at the time I thought were sort of playful and fun, and I have learned since we're not. And I have had to recognize that I crossed some boundaries and I did some things that were wrong and I made some mistakes. And that's in my past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I mean, I've been working so hard over these last seven years to have the conversations I needed to have, to listen to people, to understand things from a different perspective than the one that I had, and to say, I will never behave that way again for the rest of my life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But I have had a sexual life, and I've fallen in love, and I've been so admiring of people that I I mean, I'm so romantic. I'm such a romantic person that there's this whole side of me that hasn't been talked about, isn't being discussed, but that's who I know. That's the person I know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It's been very upsetting to hear that some people have said, I mean, I don't have a violent bone in my body, but to hear people describe things as having been very aggressive is incredibly difficult for me. And I'm deeply sorry that I ever offended anyone or hurt anyone in any way. It is crushing to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I have to work very hard to show and to prove that I have learned, I got the memo, and I will never, ever, ever behave in those ways again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And by the way, not to take anything away from my accountability for things I did where I got it wrong, I crossed the line, I pushed some boundaries. I accept all of that. But I live in an industry in which flirtation, attraction, people meeting in the workspace and ending up marrying each other and having children.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so it is a space and a place where these notions of family, these notions of attraction, these notions of It's always complicated if you meet someone in the workspace and find yourselves attracted to each other. You have to be mindful of that and you have to be very mindful that you don't ever want anyone to feel that their job is in jeopardy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
or you would punish them in some way if they no longer wanted to be with you. So those are important things to just acknowledge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yes. And I also understand that there are people who met me and spent a very brief period of time with me but presumed I was now going to be their mentor and then behaved in a way that I was unaware of that they were either participating or flirting along or encouraging me without me having any idea that at the end of the day they were expecting something. So these are about relationships.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
These are about two people. These are about... people making decisions, people making choices. And I accept my accountability in that. But there are a number of things that I've been accused of that just simply did not happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I can't say, and I don't think it would be right for me to say, well, everything that's ever been accused of is true because we've now proved that it isn't and it wasn't. But I'm perfectly willing to accept that I had behaviors that were wrong and that I shouldn't have done. and I am regretful for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, to some degree, I would say that I have been able to trust my instincts on that and that I've most of the time been right. But obviously in the last number of years, not just with people who've accused me, but just also people in my own industry, to realize that, oh, I thought we had a friendship, but I guess that was about an inch thick and not what I thought it was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But look, one shouldn't be surprised by that. I have to also say, you said a little while ago that the world had canceled me, and I have to disagree with you. I have to disagree because for seven years, I've been stopped by people, sometimes every day, sometimes multiple, multiple times a day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the conversations that I have with people, the generosity that they share, the kindness that they show, and how much they want to know when I'm getting back to work tells me that while there may be a very loud minority, there is a quieter majority.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I think betrayal is a really interesting word. But I think if you're going to be betrayed, it has to be by those who truly know you. And I can tell you that I have not been betrayed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yes. And I have spoken to many of them. Privately. Privately, which is where amends should be made. Were they able to start finding forgiveness? Absolutely. Absolutely. Some of the most moving conversations that I have had when I was determined to take accountability have been those people have said, thank you so much, and I think I can forgive you now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I think if I were to go back that far, I probably would have found a way to not have been as concerned about my revealing my sexuality and hiding that for as long as I did. I think that had a a lot to do with confusion and a lot to do with mistrust, both my own and other people's.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
That I didn't find the right moment of celebration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You know, Ian McKellen said after 40, he was 49 when he came out. 27 years he'd been a professional actor, being in the closet. And he said he felt it was like he was living a part of his life not being truthful and that he felt that it affected his work when he did come out because he no longer felt like he had anything to hide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I absolutely believe that that is what my experience has been and will continue to be. I am sorry about the way I came out, but Evan and I had already had the conversation, I had already decided to come out. And so it wasn't like, oh, I was forced to come out, but it was something I decided to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And by the way, much against Evan's advice, I came out in that statement and he wishes that I had not done so.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Really tell me how you feel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
No, I basically said that I didn't remember what this person, Anthony Rapp, was claiming from 31 years before. I had no memory of it. But if it had happened, if this embarrassing moment had happened, then I would owe him an apology. That was what I said. And then I said... And while I'm at it, I think I'll come out. And it was definitely not the greatest coming out party ever. I will admit that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
particular accusation and it's a very dramatic one it's a 40 million dollar lawsuit it's a big deal and the underage person was shown to be false well but you're you're melding two things together the lawsuit didn't happen until 2020 and then it didn't get to court until 2022 we're back in 2017 when it was just an accusation he made in buzzfeed magazine um look I was backed into a corner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
When someone says, you were so drunk you won't remember this thing happened, what's your first instinct? Is your first instinct to say this person's a liar? Or is your first instinct to go, what? I was, what? 31 years at a party I don't even remember throwing? Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that in which we were then able to prove in that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
in that court case that it had never occurred. But at the moment, I was sort of being told I couldn't push back, you have to be kind, you can't, I think even to me now, None of it sounds right. But I don't know that I could have said anything that would have been satisfactory to anybody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I'm really surprised. I guess you haven't read a lot of media posts because I can't believe that's the actual worst one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I don't think it's about the industry. I think it's about our time. I think it's the time that we're in, and people are very afraid. Just afraid, just a general fear. No, they're literally afraid that they're going to get canceled if they stand up for someone who has been. And I think it's, I mean, you know, we've seen this many times in history. This is not the first time it's happened.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Is that fair or no? I'll give you one very interesting, specific education that I got in doing Richard III and closing that show. at BAM in March of 2012, and two months later started shooting House of Cards. There is something called direct address. In Shakespeare, you have Hamlet talks to the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But when Shakespeare wrote Richard III, it was the first time he created something called direct address, which is the character looks directly at each person close by. It is a different kind of sharing than when a character is doing a monologue, an opening of Henry IV. And while there are some people who believe that direct address was invented in Ferris Bueller, it wasn't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It was Shakespeare who invented it. So I had just had this experience every night in theaters all over the world. seeing how people reacted to becoming a co-conspirator, because that's what it's about. And what I tried to do, and what Fincher really helped me with in those beginning days, was how to look in that camera and imagine I was talking to my best friend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah. And there were many times when I suppose the writers thought I was crazy where I would see a script and I would see like this moment where this direct address would happen and say all this stuff. And I'd go, when we do a read through of the script, I go, I don't think I need to say any of that. And they were like, what do you mean? I said, well, the audience knows all of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
All I have to do is look. They know exactly what's going on. I don't need to say a thing. So I was often cutting dialogue because it just wasn't needed. Because that relationship that I'd learned that I'd experienced doing Richard III was so extraordinary. where I literally watched people, they were like, oh, I'm in on the thing, and this is so awesome.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And then suddenly, wait, he killed the kids. He killed those kids in the tower. Oh, maybe it's not so. And you literally would watch them start to reverse their having had such a great time with Richard III in the first three acts. And I thought, this is going to happen in this show. If this intimacy,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
can actually land um and i think just think there was some brilliant writing and we always attempted to do it in one take no matter how long something was we would try to do it in one take the direct addresses so there was never a cut when we went out on locations we started to then find ways to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
That's the remarkable thing, is against their instincts and their better sense of what they should and should not do, they still rallied around Frank Underwood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, in that production, that's absolutely true. Also, Richard is one of the weirder, weird, I mean by weird, it was an early play of Shakespeare's. And he's basically never offstage. I mean, I remember when we did the first run-through, I had no idea what the next scene was every time I came offstage. I had no idea what was next.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
They literally had to drag me from one place to another, say, now it's the scene with Hastings, now it's the scene... But I now understand these wonderful stories that you can read in old books about Shakespeare's time, that actors... grabbed Shakespeare around the cuff and punched him and threw him against the wall and said, you ever write a part like this again, I'm going to kill you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And that's why in later plays, he started to have a pageant happen and then a wedding happen. And the main character was offstage resting because the actor had said, you can't do this to us. There's no breaks. And it's true. There's very few breaks in Richard III. You're on stage most of the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
The truth is I didn't get the part. I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films, Swimming with Sharks and Usual Suspects. And then I did a film called Outbreak that Morgan Freeman was in. And I went in to audition for David Fincher in probably late November of 94. and I auditioned for this part and didn't get it. And I went back to New York.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I certainly can't take credit for Shakespeare having written something that is funny, or Bo Willimon and his team to have written something that is funny, is fundamentally funny. It just depends on how I interpret it. That's one of the great things why we love... In a year's time, we can see five different Hamlets. We can see four Richard III's. We can see two Richard II's.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
That's part of the thrill that we don't own these parts. We borrow them and we interpret them. And what Ian McKellen might do with a role could be completely different from what I might do. because of the way we perceive it. And also, very often in terms of going for humor, it's very often a director will say, why don't you say that with a bit of irony?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Why don't you try that with a bit of blah, blah, blah?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I also think that one should just acknowledge that where he was from, there is something that happens when you do an accent. And in fact, sometimes when I would say to Bo or one of the other writers, this is really good and I love the idea, but it rhythmically doesn't help. I need at least two more words to rhythmically make this work in his accent because it just doesn't scan well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And that's not iambic pentameter. I'm not talking about that. There is that as well in Shakespeare, but there was some times when it's too many lines, it's not enough lines in order for me to make this work for the way he speaks, the way he sounds, and what that accent does to emphasis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Not really at all. I mean, Clinton, you know, look, Bill Clinton, he had a way of talking, you know, that he was very slow and he felt your pain, you know. But Frank Underwood was deeper, more direct, and less poetic in the way that Clinton would talk. I'll tell you this Clinton story that you'll like. So we decide to do a performance of The Iceman Cometh for the Democratic Party on Broadway.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the president is going to come. He's going to see this four and a half hour play. And then we're going to do this event afterward. And a couple of weeks before we're going to do this event, someone at the White House calls and says, listen, it's very unusual to get the president for like six and a half hours. So we're suggesting that the president come and see the first act. And then he goes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I knew what was happening. Now, first of all, Clinton knows this play. He knows what this play is about. And I, you know, as gently as I could said, well, if the president is thinking of leaving at intermission, then I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel the event. There's just no way that... So anyway, oh no, it's fine, it's fine. Now I know what was happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
What was happening was that someone had read the play and they were quite concerned. And I'll tell you why. Because the play is about this character that I portrayed named Hickey. And in the course of the play, as things get more and more revealed, you realize that this man that I'm playing has been a philanderer. He's cheated on his wife quite a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off because he ended up ending his wife's life because she forgave him too much and he couldn't live with it. So now imagine this. There's 2,000 people at the Brooks-Atkinson Theater watching President Clinton watching this play. And at the end of the night, we take our curtain call. They bring out the presidential podium.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Bill Clinton stands up there and he says, well, I suppose we should all thank Kevin and this extraordinary company of actors for giving us all way too much to think about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the audience fell over in laughter, and then he gave a great speech. And I thought, that was a pretty good way to handle that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
When I was starting to do research, I wanted to meet with the whip, Kevin McCarthy. And he wouldn't meet with me until I called his office back and said, tell him I'm playing a Democrat, not a Republican. And then he met with me. Nice. And he was helpful. He took me to whip meetings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I think they started shooting like December 12th, And I'm in New York, I'm back in my wonderful apartment on West 12th Street and my mom has come to visit for Christmas and it's December 23rd and it's like seven o'clock at night and my phone rings and it's Arnold Copelson who's the producer of Seven. And he's very jovial and he's very friendly and he says, how you doing? And I said, fine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
a huge amount of the credit. And not just for what he established, but the fact that every director after stayed within that world. I think that's why the series had a very consistent feeling to it. It was like watching a very long movie. the style, where the camera went, what it did, what it didn't do, how we used this, how we used that, how we didn't do this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
There were things that he laid the foundation for that we managed to maintain Pretty much until Bo Williman left the show, they got rid of Fincher, and I was sort of the last man standing in terms of fighting again. Netflix had never had any creative control at all. We had complete creative control. But over time, they started to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
get themselves involved because, look, this is what happens to networks. They'd never made a television show before, ever, and then four years later, they were the best. And so then you're going to get suggestions about casting and about writing and about music and scenes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so there was a considerable amount of pushback that I had to do when they started to get involved in ways that I thought was affecting the quality of the show.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
It can happen in different ways. I mean, I remember one argument we had was we had specifically shot a scene so that there would be no score in that scene, so that there was no music. It was just two people talking. And then we end up seeing a cut where they've decided to put music in. And it is against everything that scene's supposed to be about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And you have to go and say, guys, this was intentional. We did not want score. And now you've added score because what, you think it's too quiet? You think our audience can't listen to two people talk for two and a half minutes? This show has proved anything. It's proved that people have patience and they're willing to watch an entire season over a weekend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So there are those kind of arguments that can happen. You know, there's different arguments on different levels and they sometimes have to do with, I mean, look, go back to The Godfather. They wanted to fire Pacino because they didn't see anything happening. They saw nothing happening. So they wanted to fire Pacino.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And then finally Coppola thought, I'll shoot the scene where he kills the police commissioner and they'll do that scene now. And that was the first scene where they went, yeah, actually there's something going on there. So Pacino kept the role.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Look, I think that we can't forget that Pacino is also an animal of the theater. You know, he does a lot of plays and he started off doing plays and, you know, movies were, you know, Panic in Needle Park was his first. And yeah, I think there's that period of time when he was doing some incredible parts, incredible movies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
When I did a series called Wise Guy, I got cast on a Thursday, and I flew up to Vancouver on a Saturday, and I started shooting on Monday. And all I had time to do was watch The Godfather and Serpico, and then I went to work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, certainly, yes. But I also, look, I'm allowed to change my opinion. I can next week say it's Lawrence of Arabia, or a week after that I can say Sullivan's Travels. I mean, that's the wonderful thing about movies, and particularly great movies, is when you see them again, it's like seeing them for the first time. And you pick up things that you didn't see the last time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He said, listen, do you remember that film you came in for, Seven? I said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He goes, well, turns out that we hired an actor and we started shooting. And then yesterday, David fired him. And David would like you to get on a plane on Sunday and come to Los Angeles and start shooting on Tuesday. And I was like, okay, fine. would it be imposing to say, can I read it again?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And also, I think it's the degree with which directors are daring. I mean, Kubrick decided to cast one actor to play three major roles in Dr. Strangelove. I mean, who has the balls to do that today?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Nicholson's always been such an incredible actor because... He has absolutely no shame about being demonstrative and over the top. And he also has no problem playing characters who are deeply flawed. And he's interested in that. I have a pretty good Nicholson story, though. Nobody knows. You also have a pretty good Nicholson impression, but what's the story?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
The story was told to me by a sound man. Dennis Maitland, who's a great, great, great guy. He said he was very excited because he got on Pritzy's Honor, which was Jack Nicholson, Angelica Houston, directed by John Houston. He said, I was so excited. It was my first day on the movie, and I get told to go into Mr. Nicholson's trailer and mic him up for the first scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So I knock on the trailer door, and he yes and uh come on in i come inside mr nicholson is changing out of his regular clothes and he's putting he's going to put on his costume and so i'm setting up the mic and i'm getting ready and i said mr nicholson i i just wanted to tell you i'm i'm extremely excited to be working with you again it's it's it's a great pleasure and jack goes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Did we work together before? And he says, yes, yes, we did. And he says, what film did we do together? He says, well, we did Missouri Breaks. Nicholson goes, oh, my God, Missouri Breaks. Jesus Christ, we were out of our minds on that film. Holy shit. Jesus Christ, I wonder I'm alive. My God, there was so much drugs going on and we were stoned out of our minds. Holy shit. Just then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He folds the pants that he's just taken off over his arm and an eighth of Coke drops out on the floor. Dennis looks at it. Nicholson looks at it. Jack goes, haven't worn these pants since Missouri breaks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
What role did he play in your life? I think it was 1984. I went in to audition for the national tour of a play called The Real Things. which Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close were doing on Broadway that Mr. Nichols had directed. So I went in to read for this character, Brody, who is a Scottish character.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I did the audition and Mike Nichols comes down the aisle of the theater and he's asking me questions about where'd you go to school and what have you been doing? And I just come back from doing a bunch of years of regional theater and different theaters. So I was in New York, and meeting Mike Nichols was just incredible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So Mr. Nichols went, have you seen the other play that I directed up the block called Hurley Burley? And I said, no, I haven't. He says, why not? I said, I can't afford a Broadway ticket. He said, we can arrange that. I'd like you to go see that play, and then I'd like you to come in next week and audition for that. I was like, okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So I went to see Hurley Burley, William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Chris Walken, Candice Bergen, Cynthia Nixon, Jerry Stiller. And I watched this play. It's a play, David Ray play about Hollywood. This is crazy. I mean, Bill Hurt was like unbelievable. Unbelievable. It was extraordinary. Chris Walken. So there's this Harvey Keitel. Walken came in later. Harvey Keitel's playing this part.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I come in and I audition for it. And Nichols says, I want you to understudy Harvey Keitel. I want you to understudy Phil. And I'm like, Phil? I mean, Harvey Keitel is like in his 40s. He looks like he can beat the shit out of everybody on stage. I'm this like 24-year-old. And Nichols said, it's all about attitude.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Because it's been a while now and I'd like to. So they sent a script over. I read the script that night. I thought about it. And I had this feeling, I can't even quite describe it, but I had this feeling that it would be really good if I didn't take billing in the film.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
If you believe you can beat the shit out of everybody on stage, the audience will too. So I then started to learn fill. And the way it works when you're in understudy, unless you're a name, they don't let you rehearse on the stage. You just rehearse in a rehearsal room. But I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearse and try to figure out where the props were. Anyway, one day I get... I'll call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You're going on today. It's Phil. So I went on. Nichols is told by Peter Lawrence, who's the stage manager, Spacey's going on as Phil. So Nichols comes down and watches the second act. Comes backstage. He says, that was really good. How soon could you learn Mickey? Mickey was the role that Ron Silver was playing, that Chris Walken also played. I said, I don't know, maybe a couple weeks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He goes, learn Mickey too. So I learned Mickey. And then one day I'm told, you're going on tomorrow night as Mickey. Nichols comes, sees the second act, comes backstage, says, that was really good. I mean, that was really funny. How soon could you learn Eddie? And so I became like the pinch hitter on Hurley Burley.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I learned all the male parts, including Jerry Stiller's, although I never went on as Jerry Stiller's part. And then I left the play. And I guess about two months later, I get this phone call from Mike Nichols. He's like, Kevin, how are you? And I'm like, I'm fine. What can I do for you?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He says, well, I'm going to make a film this summer with Mandy and Meryl, and there's a role I'd like you to come in and audition for. So I went in, auditioned, cast me as this mugger on a subway, Then there's this whole upheaval that happens because he then doesn't continue with Mandy Patinkin. Mandy leaves the movie and he asked Jack Nicholson to come in and replace Mandy Patinkin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So now I had no scenes with him, but I'm in a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. And my first scene in this movie, which I shot on my birthday, July 26th of 85, um, I got to wink at Meryl Streep in this scene. And I was so nervous. I literally couldn't wink. Nichols had to like calm me down and help me wink. But that became my first, my very first film.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
and he was incredible, and he let me come and watch when they were shooting scenes I wasn't in, and I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer on the same day we were working, Jack and me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
We had no scene together, but I remember him coming in, and they put him down in the chair, and they put cucumbers, frozen cucumbers on his eyes, and did his neck, and then they raised him up and did his face, and then I remember Nicholson went like this, looked in the mirror, and he went, Another day, another $50,000. And walked out of the trailer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Oh yeah, he started out as a chorus boy, dancer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, yeah. The guy knows how to move. I've known Walken a long time and I did a Saturday Night Live where I did, we did these Star Wars auditions. I did Chris Walken as Han Solo. So good. And I'll never forget this. I was in Los Angeles about two weeks after And I was at Chateau Marmont. There's some party happening at Chateau Marmont. And I saw Chris Walken come out of, onto the balcony.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I was like, oh shit, it's Chris Walken. And he walked up to me and he went, Kevin, I saw your little sketch. It was funny, ha ha.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the reason I felt that was because I knew that by the time this film would come out, it would be the last one of the three movies that I just shot, the fourth one. And if any of those films broke through or did well if it was going to be Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey. And you don't show up for the first 25, 30, 40 minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, I mean, it might have been the first moment an audience saw him be betrayed, but it certainly was not the first betrayal he'd experienced. And once you start to get to know him,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
and learn about his life, and learn about his father, and learn about his friends, and learn about their relationship, and learn what he was like even as a cadet, I think you start to realize that this is a man who has very strong beliefs about loyalty. And so it wasn't the first. It was just the first moment that, in terms of the storyline that's being built,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Night Takes King was the name of our production company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
No. I think power is an afterthought. What he loved more than anything was being able to predict how human beings would react. He was a behavioral psychologist. And he could know, like he was 17 moves ahead in a chess game, he could know if he did this at this moment, that eventually this would happen. He was able to be predictive and was usually right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He knew just how far he needed to push someone to get them to do what he needed them to do in order to make the next step work. You've played a bunch of evil characters. Well, you call them evil. But the reason I say that, and I don't mean to be snarky about it, but the reason I say it that way is because I never judge the people I play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And the people that I have played or that any actor has played don't necessarily view themselves as this label. It's easy to say, but that's not the way I can think. I cannot judge a character I play and then play them well. I have to be free of judgment. I have to just play them and let the cards drop where they may. And let an audience judge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I mean, the fact that you use that word is perfectly fine. That's your, you know. But it's like people asking me, you know, was I really from K-Pax or not? You know, it just entirely depends on your perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
People are going to figure out who you're playing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I absolutely believe that Wandering around in someone else's ideas, in someone else's clothes, in someone else's shoes, teaches you enormous empathy. And that goes to the heart of not judging. And I have found that I have been so moved by, I mean, look, let's, yes, you've identified the darker characters. But I've played Clarence Darrow three times. I've played a play called National Anthems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I've done movies like Recount. I've done films like The Ref. I've done films in which that doesn't exist in any of those characters, those qualities. Pay it forward. And so it is incredible to be able to embrace those things that I admire and that are like me and those things that I don't admire and aren't like me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But I have to put them on an equal footing and say, I have to just play them as best I can and not decide to wield judgment over them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Without judgment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
That's one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah, I mean... One of the things that I've been focused on very succinctly is the idea that every day is an opportunity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I also think that, look, I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me, particularly my father.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You're gone. You're not there. Not there. And so New Line Cinema told me to go fuck myself, that they absolutely could use my picture and my image. And this became a little bit of a, I'd say, 24-hour conversation And it was Fincher who said, I actually think this is a really cool idea. So the compromise was I'm the first credit at the end of the movie when the credits start.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
and more succinctly, who he became. It was a gradual and slow and sad development. When I've gone back and now I've looked at diaries my father kept and albums he kept, particularly when he was a medic in the US Army, served our country with distinction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
When the war was over and they went to Germany, the things my father said, the things that he wrote, the things that he believed were as patriotic as any American soldier who had ever served. But then when he came back to America and he had a dream of being a journalist, Or his big hope was that he was going to be the great American novelist. He wanted to be a creative novelist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so he sat in his office and he wrote for 45 years and never published anything. And somewhere along the way, in order to make money, he became what they call a technical procedure writer, which the best way to describe that is that if you built the F-16 aircraft, my father would have written the manual to tell you how to do it. I mean, as boring, as technical, as tedious as you can imagine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And so somewhere in the 60s and into the 70s, My father fell in with groups of people and individuals, pretend intellectuals, who started to give him reasons why he was not successful as a white Aryan man in the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I cannot tell you the amount of times as a young boy that my father would sit me down and lecture me for hours and hours and hours about his fucked up ideas of America, of prejudice, of white supremacy. And thank God for my sister who said, don't listen to a thing he says, he's out of his mind. And even though I was young, I knew everything he was saying was against people and I loved people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
My best friend, Mike, who's still my close friend to this day, I was afraid to bring him to my house because I was afraid that my father would find out he was Jewish or that my father would leave his office door open and someone would see his Nazi flag or his pictures of Hitler or Nazi books or what he might say. So...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
when I found theater in the eighth grade and debate club and choir and festivals and plays and everything I could do to participate in that wouldn't make me have to come back home, I did. And I've had to reconcile who he became because the gap between that man who was in the U.S. Army as a medic and the man he became, I could never fill that gap.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So I got on a plane on that Sunday and I flew to Los Angeles and I went into where they were shooting and I went into the makeup room and David Fincher was there and we were talking about what should I do? How should I look? And I just had my hair short for Outbreak because I was playing a military character. And I just looked at the... and I said, do you have a razor?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
But then at the same time, I've had to look at my mother and say, She made excuses for him. Oh, he just needs to get it off his chest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So while on the outside, I would say, oh yeah, my mother loved me, but she didn't protect me. So was the, was all the stuff that she and all of the attention and all the love that I felt, was that because I became successful and I was able to fulfill an emptiness that she'd lived with her whole life with him?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I don't know, but I've had to ask myself those questions over these last years to try to reconcile that for myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I don't have any memory of that. I was in a program and they were showing us... An experiment that they'd done with psychologists and mothers and fathers and their children. And the children were anywhere between six months and a year, sitting in a little crib. And the exercise was this. Parents are playing with the baby right there, toys, yadda yadda, baby's laughing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And then the psychologists would say, stop. And the parent would go like this. And you would then watch for the next two and a half, three minutes, this child trying to get their parents' attention in any possible way. And I remember when I was sitting in this theater watching this, I saw myself. That was me. screaming and reaching out and trying to get my parents' attention. That was me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And that was not something I'd ever remembered before, but I knew what that baby was going through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I heard so many different reactions from politicians about House of Cards. Some would say, oh, it's not like that at all. And then others would say, it's closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit. And I think I fall down on the side of that idea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Well, in Frank's case, all you have to do is tell him to look into the camera and he'll tell you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
I'd love for you to just look into the camera and tell us what's really going on, what you really feel about blah, blah, blah. That's a good technique.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
So there's a lot more that I want to be challenged by, be inspired by.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And Fincher went, are you kidding?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
You know, it's been interesting because, you know, we're going back, we're talking. And, you know, it's nice to go back every now and then. But I'm focused on what's next.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
He goes, if you shave your head, I'll shave mine. So we both shaved our heads. And then I started shooting the next day. So my long-winded answer to your question is that I didn't have that much time to think about how to build that character. What I think in the end Fincher was able to do so brilliantly with such terror was to set the audience up to meet this character.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
And I believe that forgiveness and I believe that redemption are beautiful things. I mean, look, don't forget, I live in an industry in which there is a tremendous amount of conversation about redemption from a lot of people who are very serious people in very serious positions who believe in it. I mean, that guy who finally got out of prison, he was wrongly accused.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
That guy who served his time and got out of prison. We see so many people saying, let's find a path for that person. Let's help that person rejoin society. But there is an odd situation. If you're in the entertainment industry, you're not offered that kind of a path. And I hope that the fear that people are experiencing will eventually subside and common sense will get back to the table.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Listen, if it would piss off Jack Lemmon again for me to win a third time, I absolutely think so, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
Yeah. I can really only tell you that while we were shooting that scene in the car, while we were out in the desert in that place where all those electrical wires were, David just kept saying less, do less. And I just tried to, I mean, I remember he kept saying to me, remember, you're in control. Like, you're going to win. And knowing that should allow you to have tremendous confidence.